Graham Reid

Nah, she said emphatically as our flight descended into Cairns. “I'm in the Atherton Tablelands now. Used to live here. Fifteen years. Got sick of the rat race.”

Maybe Cairns – 26 degrees on a cloudless June day when bitterly cold Auckland was being drenched – is hectic in tourist season, but a “rat race”?

Traffic moves at an easy pace along wide streets, most people walk slow and take time to give directions, and this place with the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree National Park (both World Heritage sites) on its doorstep has a walk-shorts and summer frock feel...

We left Puerto Natales fairly early in the morning and headed for the hills and mountains of Torres del Paine National Park. The road was well formed but the corrugations, shingle and rocks embedded in its surface, made for a bumpy, dusty ride.  We passed a tiny fox having his breakfast by the side of the road and a gaucho in a broad brimmed hat impressed us with his skill.

Graham Reid

It's a curious thing, but the quiet of a cemetery can tell us as much about a town as the living residents gabbing over drinks in a late night bar. There on moss-covered and often damaged headstones are the spare, telling details of lives which can speak to us of long-gone days.

Even more than a chat over over schooner in a local pokie bar, at pleasant, orderly and somewhat sleepy Cooktown, five hours drive north of Cairns and at the base of the Cape York Peninsula, I learned more about the place at the graveyard just outside town.

Read more…  http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/4959/cooktown-far-north-queensland-life-with-the-dead/

Puerto Natales is located in the province of Última Esperanza, ‘Last Hope,’ named from the sailor Juan Ladrilleros, who was seeking a passage to the Strait of Magellan in the year 1557. It was his "last hope" of finding the Strait after exploring the maze of channels between the waters of the Pacific and the mainland.

Graham Reid

In Guizhou province they move mountains. Literally.

Here in this vast region of south west China – two thirds the area of New Zealand and with a population around 40 million – mountains are moved for motorways and housing, shaped into terraces for crops or highrise apartments, bored through for lengthy tunnels and have enormous bridges strung between them.

Beipanjiang Bridge which opened in 2010 spans the massive Malinghe Gorge and is the highest in Asia. It cuts 40 winding kilometres off the old route and is spun like a steel spider's thread almost 400 metres above the valley where the Maling River below is known as “the number one rafting” spot in the region.

That evening we had dinner in a restaurant which served typical Argentine food cooked on spits over open fires. The tables were big and wooden with bench seats down either side. We grabbed a space when it became available and were given a bowl and a large plate. We weren’t sure what to do so watched everyone else for a while. It was half self-service and half waiter service.

Graham Reid

Ever been in a place where everything is the same, but different? Let me illustrate.

It was close to midnight in Florence and after a fine dinner I went for a lazy stroll through the lamp-lit streets, then stopped at an outdoor cafe in Piazza della Repubblica for a nightcap of grappa.

From across the broad square the distant sound of a woman singing opera mingled with the disco-dance from a bar, but otherwise the night was pleasingly quiet as couples and small groups ambled past. I relaxed into my chair and then glanced around at the other patrons scattered around beneath the umbrellas.

To my left, seated against the wall of the cafe, was a man who looked exactly like the German actor Kurt Jurgens (1915-82), and a little further along Salman Rushdie was chatting with Mr Heppleston my old 3rd form social studies teacher. He hadn't aged a bit.

Read more…  http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/560/florence-italy-the-passing-strange-parade/

Kate Frost

The journey up the lake was long but interesting and we were able to see the changing landforms caused by the receding icecap, thousands of years ago. The narrowest point of Lago Argentino is called Boca del Diablo, the Mouth of the Devil, where the sheer scarred walls of rock, rise high on either side of the boat.